Normalcy
by Amarthame
Summary: ZADR. "Are they just rerunning the same episode over and over?" Dib asked himself as he chewed on his cheese puffs and waited for Zim to come up from the lab-- A moment in the lives of an alien, a social outcast, and a robot.


**Seri****es: **Invader Zim

**Pairing(s): **ZADR (aka Zim/Dib)

**Summary:** _Are they just rerunning the same episode over and over?_ Dib asked himself as he chewed on his cheese puffs and waited for Zim to come up from the lab. A moment in the lives of an alien, a social outcast, and a robot.

**Disclaimer: **Invader Zim and all related characters, etc. are the property of Nickelodeon and the brain-child of Jhonen Vasquez.

**Other Notes:** In my infinite attempts to write a story that finally, realistically got Zim and Dib together, I have yet to succeed. I'm still trying, sure, and "Mutual" probably came close (in my personal taste, anyway), but I couldn't possibly keep at that 24/7 and deny the writability of other stories. =P So today I come to you with this light ficlet in which Zim and Dib are already together, in a comfortable relationship. But aside from that, it's my attempt to explain Zim and Dib in their downtime, just enjoying an ordinary moment of life outside of arguing and special occasions that other authors like to write about (whether those be the authors of PWP fics or epic-length adventure stories). Heh, actually, I was gonna post this fic up on my birthday as a birthday-present-to-me sort of thing, but then I realized that another fic that I'm working on will fit the bill a little better than this one. xD But I'll see.

And of course, if you like the fanfic, please review to tell me so. And if you don't, please review to tell me what you didn't like about it. And if you want to spite me, don't review at all. xD But feedback of any sort is welcomed with more than open arms! =)

**------**

_Are they just rerunning the same episode over and over?_ Dib asked himself idly as he chewed his way through a handful of cheese puffs, gazing rather blankly at the screen. Every day, it seemed, they showed the same image of the same monkey from the same angle growling at the same exact moments without any change between the episodes at all. Well, Dib couldn't really testify to the last bit, as he could hardly be expected to have memorized the show down to such minute detail. He glanced over at GIR, who reclined lazily on the couch to Dib's left. He wondered briefly whether the robot's programmed mind had committed the show to memory in such a complete manner, then remembered GIR's malfunctioning tendencies and knack for forgetting things and wrote his musings off as unlikely at best. And so he went back to watching the mindless entertainment being secreted from the screen some ten or twelve feet in front of him.

Truth be told, he would have changed the channel if he thought that GIR would have let him get away with it. But it had long since been agreed that the only time when Dib had even the slightest say in what presented itself on the television screen was at eight o'clock PM on weekdays and eleven o'clock AM on Saturdays, and only for an hour during Mysterious Mysteries. So no matter how much he thought about it, he was still resigned to watch the Angry Monkey Show until Zim came up from his lab.

Technically, Dib was free to go down into the lab and join Zim with whatever it was he was doing, but Zim was only doing routine repairs on one of the containment chambers. Dib had seen more than enough of those sorts of things through the years that the novelty of such basic Irken technology had long since worn off. And besides, he could already hear the gentle hum of an elevator coming up into the kitchen.

Seconds later, Zim walked into the room with a burn mark on his forehead and several dusting his invader uniform and gloves, and a look on his face that screamed irritation. Dib couldn't help but chuckle at the all-revealing tendency all of Zim's expressions carried; it didn't matter what the alien was feeling at a given moment, one look at his face would give everything away. Maybe it was because his eyes were so big and passionate all the time. Dib wasn't sure, but he did know that ever since he had gotten over the instinctive fear for the safety of his limbs that half of Zim's expressions used to instill in him, the way Zim always had all his emotions displayed neatly in his face had struck him as plain adorable. So he took it in stride when Zim glared at him, annoyed, as he sat down on the couch to GIR's left.

"Is something funny, stink-human?" Zim demanded, reverting to using his derogatory diminutives for Dib like he only did when he was mildly irritated.

"Not really," Dib admitted with a smirk. He watched Zim as he set down the container he carried between himself and GIR, and Dib recognized it to be a box for those Irken licking sticks. "What happened to you?"

"Nothing, Dib-filth, what makes you think that something happened?" Zim snapped with a challenging look flickering in his eyes. It might have been a look that anybody else with half a brain would be wary of, but Dib knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that Zim would be over it in a matter of minutes.

"The burn marks gave me a clue," Dib returned evenly as he grabbed another handful of cheese puffs from the bag at his side.

"Eh? Oh," Zim looked down at his uniform and dusted himself off, not doing much to disperse the burn marks but not seeming to mind. "The computer forgot to turn off the defense systems before I started working," he grumbled hatefully.

"Get over it, Zim," the computer said with a bored sigh, and Dib could hear it rolling its eyes, despite its lack of them.

"Silence!" Zim snapped at the ceiling and the computer obediently refrained from responding. Dib found himself caught between sympathy and a snicker, for he knew that the anti-tinker system Zim had installed a few years ago to keep Dib from tampering with the equipment every time he broke in (they had still been enemies back then) was designed to administer an electric shock and he'd had more than one run-in with it back in the day. So he could empathize fairly effectively. But still...

"Your computer _forgot?_" he asked incredulously, the urge to laugh leaking through in the form of a chuckle.

"Yes," Zim replied simply, staring at Dib with a look that plainly told him that this was a fairly regular occurrence and that Dib's needing to ask about it was just plain weird.

Dib just shook it off and sighed amusedly. Better to leave the obscure inner workings of Zim's home alone, he decided. He directed his attention back towards the television screen and put about half of his handful of cheese puffs into his mouth. He was halfway through chewing when he thought he caught Zim cringe out of the corner of his eye. Dib turned his head and speedily finished chewing, then swallowed, and asked, "Something wrong?"

"The smell of that cheese... How can you eat such filth?" Zim demanded disgustedly as he shot the cheese puffs a nauseated look.

Dib looked down at his hand, covered in a fine orange powder from the snack, and shrugged. "Your robot's the one that bought them." The idea of GIR running out to the convenience store, dressed as a green dog with an all-too-noticeable zipper, and buying a bag of cheese puffs with what had to be stolen money had long since become completely and utterly commonplace. Yes, normalcy seemed destined to elude Dib now that he lived with his pseudo-boyfriend (neither of them had ever named their relationship in such a way, so, technically speaking, he couldn't call Zim his boyfriend or lover or anything like that), who was of course an alien test tube baby with whom Dib had spent the better part of his childhood fighting for the fate of the Earth. With a sarcastic smirk, the voice of Dib's conscience wondered why in the world Dib couldn't lead a normal life with such obviously normal conditions surrounding him.

Dismissing his sardonic thoughts, Dib found himself looking over at Zim's Irken snack, realizing for what felt like the first time that the container that held the licking sticks seemed to be entirely empty. "Besides," he continued, "at least you can see these things," he held up the cheese puffs, "Is there even anything in there?" He gestured towards Zim's alien snack.

Zim stared blankly at the stick container for a long moment, or rather, as blankly as he could stare with his brow furrowed in contemplation and just the slightest irritation. "Of course there is! Eh, I think..." He dipped one of the sticks into its container, rattling it around a bit and then removing it. He put it in his mouth, tasting it intently, then shrugged. "There must be something in it."

"But shouldn't you at least know what that is?" Dib inquired with a raised eyebrow.

Zim frowned, almost insultedly even. "I bet you don't even know what's in the garbage you're eating!" He pointed at the bag of cheese puffs with the licking stick in his hand.

Dib shook his head and picked the bag up. "Yes, I do, it's written right on the ba—oh." Dib stared uncomprehendingly at the ingredients, trying to decipher the jumble of letters that didn't seem to form words, but rather, one large conglomerate mass that was seriously lacking in properly-placed vowels. Even as Professor Membrane's son, Dib had never been able to understand so much as half of a word in the list of synthesized snack ingredients on any such package.

"I told you so, Earth-stink," Zim proclaimed, using the derogatory nickname in the teasing, fond sense that came through when he was feeling particularly vindicated after proving Dib wrong.

"Hey, at least my snack has the ingredients written on it somewhere!" Dib returned indignantly, strangely insulted by this mild assault on his eating habits. It was one of those odd, petty things that came with being human in that day and age, he presumed: a protectiveness of his snacks. Or maybe he just hung around Zim so much that Irken mannerisms had started to rub off on him.

"So what? Irken snacks are far superior to your filthy cheese-dirt, anyway."

Dib frowned slightly, then just shrugged. "Probably," he conceded through a mouthful of cheese puffs, "These aren't really that good."

Zim stared at the packet of cheese puffs in what was arguably his lover's hand with a look of immense suspicion that no other bag of snacks could ever claim to have undergone before grabbing the second stick out of the Irken snack container and holding it out to Dib. "Here."

Dib swallowed his mouthful of cheese and accepted the licking stick from Zim, then stared at it uncertainly. "You sure it's okay?" He couldn't claim that he wasn't incredibly interested in what this strange snack tasted like, but after seeing Zim's reaction to Earth's food...

"Yes, yes, GIR's fallen asleep. He won't mind you taking his."

Dib looked down and noticed for the first time that GIR was lying back against the couch cushions with his eyes closed, fast asleep. How did a robot even manage to do any of that, anyway? Dib stared thoughtfully at GIR for a brief moment, then turned his attention back to the Irken snack in his hand and shook his head. "No, I mean, are you sure it's safe? It's not exactly made for humans to eat."

Zim frowned sourly and waved a dismissive hand. "Don't be silly, just try it! You made Zim try your skool's filthy human dirt, no?" he finished with a distinct hateful note in his voice as he thought of all the beans and meat and (he shuddered) bologna.

Dib rolled his eyes at that. "Are you still mad about that? You haven't been in the skool cafeteria in years!" And Zim hadn't, ever since he learned that the Hi Skool allowed its students to spend lunch wherever on campus they chose. That, Dib recalled, had caused Dib to go hungry through the better part of most skool days Freshman and Sophomore year while he ran around during lunch looking for Zim to stop the alien's latest evil scheme.

Zim just shot him a glare. Dib sighed internally at that; the alien always got like this when they talked about all the awful things Dib had done to him back when they were still enemies. He knew that it was only because Zim felt indignant at having been defeated so many times, and he knew that Zim didn't really hold those grudges against him, but Zim still managed to succeed in making Dib feel guilty for trying to expose him all those times.

"Just promise not to let this thing kill me," Dib conceded as he lifted the licking stick towards his mouth.

Zim crossed his arms and sat back in the couch, staring at Dib amusedly now. "Of course," he agreed lightly, offhandedly.

Dib took a tentative lick of the alien snack, and his taste buds hardly even had time to send the signals they had received to Dib's brain before he cried out in disgust and held the offending treat at arm's length. "Oh, ew! I didn't even know they could make things that sweet!"

Zim laughed noisily at the revolted expression on Dib's face, then grinned with the most pompous amusement when Dib glared at him. "Inferior human taste buds! Of course you cannot comprehend the amazing-ness that is Irken snacking!" He kept laughing obnoxiously, and Dib found it a wonder that GIR managed to sleep through something like that.

Dib rolled his eyes as Zim stopped his endless stream of laughter and replaced it with the start of a rant, somehow convinced of having won their snack pseudo-argument. It was almost surprising how often Zim did things like this nowadays; they had so little to legitimately argue about that Zim had taken to ranting his victory to Dib about anything and everything he could have arguably won. It was sort of endearing, in a way, but Dib still found himself missing the calmer image of Zim that had sat on the other side of the couch from him in relative quiet before. Usually, Dib humored Zim and let him rant and even contradicted him in mimicry of the arguments they used to have. Because sometimes, Dib felt compelled to have those little tugs of war with the loud, passionate alien, just like they used to have when Dib had been a kid. But sometimes, today being one of them...

_Okay. Do I really feel like listening to this?_ He asked himself as a tease of a thought formed in his head. He smirked, then waited for Zim to pause in his rant and then took his opportunity to lean over GIR and shut Zim up.

Zim had been prepared to continue his rant shortly before taking a breath, but was stopped when Dib's lips pressed against his in a firm kiss. His antennae stood rigid, surprised, for a brief second, then relaxed and lay limp against the back of the couch. Within seconds, Dib began to pull away, but Zim grabbed onto Dib's shirt with a powerful one-handed grip, forcefully pulling Dib into a sweet, longer kiss.

When they finally broke apart, Dib sat back on his side of the couch and grinned mockingly at the alien sitting over on the other side. "Inferior taste buds or not, Zim, we humans must be doing _something_ right with our tongues."

Zim snickered at that, then looked over at the television screen and grumbled (though Dib saw and heard the smile in his voice), "You taste like cheese. It's revolting."

At that, Dib only rolled his eyes fondly, watching the alien for a short moment before returning his licking stick to its container and turning his head to watch the monkey on the screen. He considered changing the channel, since GIR was obviously a heavy sleeper and probably wouldn't notice anyway. But then, Dib mused, it _was_ GIR.

He decided not to risk it.


End file.
